-Bernadette Bagley; Rotary 5340 Assistant District Governor Group 8 (Montecito Rotary Club)
Rotary Guests:
-Russell Story, (guest of Jacqueline Duran)
Announcements:
-Tom Jacobs: the 9/15 Adams School clean-up day went very well! (see photo and details below)
-Cathy Calabro: The Mary Kay fundraising event on 9/13 was well-attended and raised a lot of money for Domestic Violence Solutions of Santa Barbara and PACE.
-Sandi Schwartz: Announced that Blas Garza is the recipient of the “People of Action Award”, honoring his contributions to our Rotary Club. Congratulations, Blas!
MegaBucks:
-Tim Bigelow: 1 MB for attending the recent Rotary President-Elect Retreat, where he learned a lot to help him prepare for the presidency next year, and on top of that he and his teammate (Bernadette Bagley) were winners of the retreat competition. Well done!
-John Holehouse: 1 MB for last week’s win that his team (who finished 4th place last season) had over last season’s champions in the over-50 softball league
-Don George: 1 MB to recognize Dennis Waid for donating his bike to benefit Adams School
-Tom Jacobs: 1 MB for his son’s upcoming interview with a local area engineering firm (we wish him luck!)
50/50 Drawing:
Don George drew a silver marble from the bag, and guest Bernadette Bagley won the fruit basket.
Successful Adams School Cleanup on 9/15!
The garden area was spruced up with many school families helping out.
Thank you to our own Jacqueline Duran (and son, Henry), Dennis Waid, and Stanley Weinstein for their participation!
Bring your chili A-game to the SB North Chili Cook-Off, 11am-2pm on 10/27!
Sandra "Sandi" Schwartz
District Governor, Rotary International District 5240
ADG Bernadette Bagley introduced our speaker today, DG Sandra “Sandi” Schwartz, who spoke to the group about our Rotary district and the current happenings in Rotary, both locally and internationally. Sandi is a Registered Nurse, with over 40 years working in Home Health and Hospice, where she was already doing quite a bit of community service work. She joined her first Rotary group in 1994, the Bakersfield East Rotary Club, of which she is still a member. After participating in a National immunization Day event in India in 2004, she really hit the ground running and began to get involved in more Rotary activities. She became her club’s president for the 2013-14 year and kept quite busy. That year, Bakersfield East RC won the award for “Best Medium Sized Club for Vocational Service”, the Rotary International’s President’s Award with distinction, and grew the club membership by 7 members. She has won the Rotary International Avenue of Service award in 2013 and the District 5420 Jock McKenzie Leadership award in 2014. Sandi and her husband Richard are both benefactors to the Rotary Foundation and are both Paul Harris Fellows and Major Donors.
Rotary District 5240 includes 72 clubs and extends from about Cambria to Oxnard along the coast, inland to include Delano all the way to Inyokern—as far East as Indian Wells Valley, and down south to Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. As of July 2018, there are 3,239 members in the district. Our district is in Zone 26, which is partnered with Zone 25, and makes up the West Coast from Vancouver, British Columbia down to the Mexican border (including Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii). The Rotary International Director for Zones 25 & 26 is John Matthews (Rotary Club of Mercer Island, Washington), and the current Rotary International President is Barry Rassin (Rotary Club of East Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas).
Our Santa Barbara North club has been roughly steady with overall membership over the past few years, but is definitely skewed heavily toward males (only 3 female members) and much of the membership is over-70 years of age. Sandi’s message to the district this year includes the topics of club membership retention, keeping Millennials and Seasoned Rotarians engaged and enthused, and honoring military/veterans/first responders.
The Rotary District 5240 conference is coming up at the Doubletree Inn in Bakersfield on October 5-6, 2018 (see the flyer below for details), with a focus on human trafficking and the peace initiative. The “official District 5240 2018-19 cocktail” is called “Timber” (see this week’s photo album for the recipe) and will be served at the conference’s Rotary Foundation Gala. The conference is still looking for sponsors, so if you or your company is interested in being a sponsor, please email Dan Giordano (dgiordano@bak.rr.com) or Kevin Burton (kburton@kleinlaw.com).
Sandi touched on Rotary’s work to eradicate polio, with only 3 countries still with endemic polio (Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan), as India has been polio-free since 2011. Sandi announced her upcoming polio fundraiser, the second-annual “Ride To Nowhere”, where on 10/23/18 (World Polio Day) she will be riding her stationary bike and hoping to double last year’s distance of 100 miles (and beat the $10,000 in donations). The Rotary District Leadership staff planted trees at Camp Whittier in April, after last year’s fire, for all the 72 clubs and 8 Rotaract clubs in the district and a plaque beside each. Sandi presented our club with a photo of the tree planted on behalf of our group.
